Even the lighting sector's representative body, the European Lamp Companies Federation (ELC), is calling time on the technology that has lit the world since the 19th Century.

Its members support the phasing out of household incandescent bulbs by 2015, which it says will cut carbon dioxide emissions from lighting by 60%.

Philips, a member of the ELC, has set itself a target of doubling sales of its "green" products to 30% of its total revenue over the next five years.

Theo van Deursen, chief executive of Philips Lighting, says the target is based on the simple formula of customers-saving-energy equals customers-saving-money.

"Globally, 19% of electricity is used for lighting," he told BBC News. "We think you could save 40% of that, which means there are potentially huge savings."

'Free ticket'

While there seems to be consensus on the home front, Mr van Deursen believes more attention needs to be paid to the way we light our cities.

Before and after: A street in Redbridge using modern lighting

"If cities renewed their lighting systems, then it is a free ticket; there has to be some investment, but the payback (period) is relatively fast," he says.

"The renewal rate should increase, because the current rate for (renewing) street lighting is once every 30-40 years.

"This means that many streets are still lit with technology from the 1960s."

Mr van Deursen says the demand for lighting is only going to increase as more and more people live in cities.

"Today, one out of every two people live in an urban area. One hundred years ago, this figure was only 10%.

"If you go forward to the middle of this century, then we expect 75% of the world's population to live in a city."

A number of cities, including London, Sydney and Paris, have staged mass switch-offs as a symbolic gesture to highlight the problem of energy waste.

Streets are used by everyone everyday, yet they are the most badly designed part of the urban environment

Stella Bland,Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment

But Mr van Deursen says switching off is not the answer.

"If you think of major urban areas with 20 million people, if you switch all the lights off then you get a lot of crime and vandalism, and that is not what we want," he explained.

"There is modern technology that means you can do the job in a much better way."

He cites the London Borough of Redbridge as an area that is benefiting from using new ways of lighting its streets.

"The light quality has improved a lot and there have been energy savings of
50%. House prices in the street went up because people love to live in a street that is nicely lit."

2020 vision

Philips Lighting has published the results of a global research project called city.people.light, which invited leading luminaries from the worlds of urban planning and architecture, including architects Lord Rogers and Richard Meier, to share their vision of how they think cityscapes should look in 2020.